By Aaron Smith

NEW ORLEANS — John Calipari was asked about his winning his first national championship, and his first reaction was relief. He said he was tired. He pinched the bridged of his nose and rubbed his eyes.

“I told my wife, ‘I’m glad it’s done,’ so I can get about my business of coaching basketball,” Calipari said. “I can get on with it and I don’t have to hear the drama. I can just coach now. I don’t have to worry. If you want to know the truth, it’s almost like, done, let me move on.”

Let me look back first.

Three years and a day since being formally announced as the new head coach, Calipari brought home the school’s eighth national championship.

He came to Lexington that day with a vision and constructed a new way of chasing a title around it. Give me as much talent as possible, he said, and I’ll make it work.

He remained adamant that his method would work, even as detractors disagreed and even as his own teams fell short. Heading into the title game, he said it would either work now, or it would work later.

It worked now.

For Calipari, it couldn’t have come in a better scenario.

He beat Kansas and Bill Self, who had defeated his Memphis team in 2008 as the Tigers missed shot after shot and the Jayhawks hit a buzzer-beater to send the game into overtime, where they prevailed. Calipari had seen his title wash away after leading by nine with 2:12 to go. It didn’t seem as though Calipari had ever really gotten over that game. It didn’t seem as though Calipari would ever get over that game until he finally won a title.

And then: UK led Kansas by seven with 2:12 to go. The clock dwindled, and the Cats made their shots. Marquis Teague hit two with 53 seconds left, putting UK up by eight. As he came to the bench immediately afterward, Calipari leaned down to him and gave two emphatic high-fives. After the buzzer sounded, Calipari finally let himself detach from the actual game. He turned around, found longtime assistant John Robic, and hugged him.

Finally champions.

“He gives to our state, our university, his players,” athletic director Mitch Barnhart said. “For him to be able to enjoy being a national championship coach is really special.”

He did so in the most all-or-nothing season he’s ever experienced.

The preseason talk was about how Calipari needed a title, eventually, to confirm his merits as a coach, and that this year was his best shot. At times it felt like it was his only shot, the expectations reached so high.

He maintained through all of it that he wasn’t concerned with a title,that his legacy will encompass more than that.

“I feel the same as I did before the game,” Calipari said. “I don’t feel any different. I’m not going to change who I am.”

He’s right, of course, but he’s been a basketball guy all his life. He knows what a title means. A championship is a big part, maybe the biggest part, of any coach’s legacy.

Now he has one to call his own.